by Med-O
“If art cannot change the world, it can help to change the consciousness and drives of the women and men who would change the world.”
Herbert Marcuse, “The Aesthetic Dimension”
Do practices like song or dance or prayer or graffiti or telling fairy tales have any real impact on stopping war or feeding people? Or are these symbolic gestures that function mostly as a substitute for asserting real social power?
I feel intensely schizophrenic answering those questions. I feel hopeful when relying solely on imagination, but hopeless when looking straight at the infrastructure of power.
For many artists, explaining or justifying art, however well intentioned, is simply playing into the hands of the anti-art, anti-freedom forces which constantly attack the artistic way of life.
I, however, think it is crucial to critically examine the role of art and the artist within a pro-art, pro-freedom perspective. I believe in the practice of constructive criticism for every aspect of life. Our greatest strength arises from the ability to deeply question and debate the thorny issues, contradictions and ironies that confront those dedicated to a life of cultural expression, insight, beauty, and social consciousness.
Even though I feel antagonistic toward Karl Marx’s annoying phrase, “Consciousness lags behind the material conditions,” it provides a counter-perspective and useful friction to my strong belief in the power of the imagination and consciousness to shape social reality. Today’s global horror show could not possibly be maintained without a major failure of popular imagination and will.
We are led by institutions and leaders that lack the basic sense of art, eros or compassion necessary to handle the inevitable conflicts produced by society.
With no awareness for the art of conflict‚ public life is subsumed by displays of police and military force, “security” measures, drive-by shootings, fly-by bombings and a booming prison industry as solutions to conflict. Our utter failure to create better solutions arises from a collapse of collective imagination.
Ten years ago, in 848′s first newsletter, I wrote, “We are urban love warriors. Our calling is the education of desire. We must fight for excesses of global justice and personal flamboyance.”
I am inspired by William Blake, who wanted his poetry to be both accessible and demand an extension of our emotional and intellectual capacities. He believed that art possesses a unique power to provoke progressive shifts of consciousness — but only when it engages the individual in a process of emotional and intellectual struggle to fully grasp it.
I am also committed to the Situationist vision that, “it is not a matter of putting poetry at the service of revolution, but rather of putting revolution at the service of poetry. The history of poetry is only a way of running away from the poetry of history, if we understand by that phrase not the spectacular history of rulers but rather the history of everyday life and its possible liberation.”
To that end, I’m most interested in art-making that is socially relevant, emotionally engaging, complex, contradictory, unexpected and willing to commit the ultimate economic crime — that which seeks to avoid the cash transaction. These are the most important ingredients artists and art lovers can mix to help create a freer, more just and interesting world.
Med-O is a founder of CounterPULSE: A San Francisco Center for Cultural Experimentation (formally, 848 Community Space), online at http://www.848.com/.
Tags: DIY Library
